


heartbreak tour

by ymorton



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Cunnilingus, F/M, M/M, Pining, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 03:51:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4206885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ymorton/pseuds/ymorton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>harry moves to new york for a bit</p>
            </blockquote>





	heartbreak tour

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on tumblr in jan. 2014 
> 
> come say hi [here](http://www.ihavea1dbloghelp.tumblr.com)

“You ever had your heart broken?” Harry asks, idly, lying on his back in bed on a Tuesday evening, smoking a fag. It’s warm in New York for June, and the windows are cracked open, sunset filtering in warm and golden, along with the sounds of cars going by, people talking. Harry’s in just pants, and his hair needs a wash, but he’s tired and Alexa’s shower is terribly far away. 

“Yes,” Alexa answers absently, typing something on her laptop, propped on her bare thigh in bed. “Wait. Why?" 

"Just. Wondering. What you did to get over it." 

Harry sits up, hands Alexa the cigarette, and Alexa takes it, stares at him for a long moment.

Then she takes a drag and blows out a cloud of smoke. 

"Please don’t say this is about me." 

"No,” Harry says, thickly, staring down at his phone. “Just- what did you do?" 

"I drank a lot for a while, I cried over the phone to my mother, I walked around New York wearing a huge wooly jacket feeling tragic. I don’t know, the standard. It’s awful, obviously, but it passes." 

She looks at him, tilting her head, and he nods, slowly. 

"Did you mess up?” she says softly. 

Harry shrugs. “Maybe." 

"Is it fixable?" 

"They’re with someone else,” he says, hating the way his voice curls up in his throat, mean and small. 

She nods, knowingly. “S'the worst, that. You feel so pathetic." 

Harry nods, and she squeezes his bare knee, passes over the fag. "Listen, kiddo. You’re young and beautiful and you’ll get over it- oh, fuck, I hated when people said that to me, sorry. Sod that. Want to just wallow in it for a bit?" 

"Yeah, think so,” Harry says, with a forced half-smile. 

“Are you thinking about them?” she says, quietly, as Harry takes a drag. 

“Pretty much always,” Harry admits, and then he slides his phone over to her, letting out a shaky breath. 

She looks at the screen, where he’s brought up Nick’s contact in his phonebook, and then at him, her eyes going wide. 

“Oh, Haz,” she says softly, and he takes the phone back, looks at it.  _Nick Grimshaw_. She’s the first person he’s told other than the lads, and it feels- he thought it’d feel better. 

“How long?” she asks. 

Harry shrugs, picking at a bright pink thread on her quilt. “Year or so, maybe. Since before tour." 

"Shit,” she breathes. “Does he even-" 

"We had a thing, before tour,"  he says, pulling harder at the thread. "Just casual, like. And then I came home and he was- he’s, he’s with Nicco, this guy Nicco?" 

"I’ve met him, yeah,” Alexa says. “He’s a sweet guy." 

"He’s great,” Harry says bitterly. “Which makes me feel even more shit." 

"Does Grimmy know you - feel like this?" 

"I’m not fucking things up for him,” Harry says firmly, looking at her. “He’s happy." 

"How do you know he’s happy?" 

"I- just. He just is. You can tell. Nicco’s - better at being a boyfriend, anyway. Doesn’t go away all the time. Nick hates when people leave him." 

His voice cracks a bit in the middle of his sentence, and Alexa says, "Right, you need a cuddle,” and curls herself around him, pulls his head to her neck. It’s not sexual, even though they’re both half-naked and they’ll probably shag later. It’s just- warm. Motherly, almost. Harry closes his eyes and breathes. 

“It sucks,” she says. “I know." 

"Really sucks,” he says, thick and muffled into her skin. 

“Yeah, I know." 

She pulls back, strokes his hair away from his face. 

"That why you’re here? In New York?" 

"Maybe,” Harry says, swiping at his eyes. “Maybe a little." 

"You’re a cliche, Harry Styles." 

Harry laughs, choked. "I know." 

"You can escape the continent but you can’t escape what’s in your heaaaart,” she trills, and he heaves a sigh. 

“Trust me, I know." 

"Well, okay. So you’re a little in love with Nick Grimshaw. You’re also in New York City with the coolest person you’ll  _ever_  meet- that’s me, of course. The night is young, alright? Want to go drink the pain away?" 

Harry brightens a little. As much as he loves Grimmy- oh, shit, he  _loves Grimmy_ \- he can’t stand being sad. He likes it, the shiny part of his life - the parties, the clubs, the people. Feeling down for days on end just isn’t in his nature. 

Nick likes that sort of thing too. Nick’s always up for a chat with  _anyone_. It’s one of Harry’s very favorite things about him-  

Oh, god, he’s thinking about bloody Nick again. 

"Yeah,” he says, and she kisses his forehead. 

“You make me feel about a million years old sometimes,” she says, thoughtfully. “Let’s go, Styles." 

That night they go to a gallery opening and then a bar, deep in the Village. Harry drinks wine and discusses art with a bunch of tattooed hipsters who either don’t know who he is or don’t care to admit it. At the bar he sits between Alexa and some girl named Yasmin with a pierced septum who’s studying postcolonial literature  at NYU and is way, way too cool for him. 

He gets drunk and asks dumb questions about her thesis, and ends up back at Alexa’s flat, pressing her against the door for a long hot snog, then dropping to his knees to eat her out, right there. 

When she comes, rolling her hips onto his jaw until his neck and tongue are aching from the strain, she slams a hand into his hair and says, "Jesus fucking Christ, Harry-”, her voice shaking. He staggers back on his knees with his mouth tasting of wine and her. 

“Youuu,” she says, pointing at him, still pressed against the door with her dress rucked up over her stomach and her sheer black thigh-highs on. “You little menace." 

Harry grins, licking his lips, and reaches down to jerk himself off. 

All in all, not a bad night. 

He wakes up suddenly at 4 AM, though - stumbles to the bathroom and vomits up a tiny bit of wine. Just a tiny bit- one or two heaves and then he washes his mouth out with Listerine and splashes water over his face, breathing raggedly. 

Alexa’s curled up around a pillow in bed, snoring loudly, and Harry walks over to her, picks up his phone from the bedside and goes into the kitchen. 

He makes a cuppa- good English stuff Alexa’s got, a nice box of Yorkshire Red- and texts Nick, even though he shouldn’t. 

_good morning nicholas grimshaw x,_ he writes, sipping his tea. The loft apartment is cool and filled with silvery moonlight and he can hear faint city noise outside. 

_mooorning darling. except wait isn’t it night time there? go to bed_

Harry grins, closes his eyes for a second. 

_the city never sleeps and neither do i  
_ _hows the show_

_it’s good popstar shall i say hello to everyone from you xx hows our chung?_

Harry looks over at Alexa, still dead to the world. 

He loves her, in a way, and yet he knows it’s not like the way he loves Nick. He loves all these people in different ways, and it hurts, sometimes. He doesn’t really get it. 

_she’s good_ , he writes back.  _how’s nicco ?_

Maybe that was stupid. Maybe they’re just pretending like Harry doesn’t know, or like there was nothing between him and Nick, ever. Harry can’t really keep track of what they’re pretending, at this point. 

_he’s good haz thx when are you back in town? x_

Harry looks at it, drags in a breath. 

_not sure yet_ , he types.  _playing it by ear till rehearsals start_

He takes a sip of tea, rubs a hand over his forehead. A headache is starting up in the back of his neck, low and throbbing. 

_come visit soon, at least. the nation misses its favorite popstar_

Harry takes another slow swallow of tea. 

There was this night, three weeks before tour, nearly a year ago now. He and Nick got drunk at a pub with Aimee and Ian and Gillian, and then Nick took him home. They were tipsy, not wasted, so it wasn’t too difficult to get naked and hard. It was never difficult for Harry to get hard, with Nick.

_Or with anyone_ , he pictures Nick saying, laughing.  _Bloody teenage hormones_. 

He fucked Nick on his back, that night, in Nick’s bed- Nick splaying his legs and holding Harry’s face in his hands and gasping breathlessly. Harry still feels this odd sort of reverence, when he gets to be inside someone. It’s mental, when he thinks about it, that people - the most amazing people - let him put his prick inside them. 

He wanted to say something like that, but he knew Nick would laugh. 

Instead he kissed Nick as he came, slow and wet - fucked him deep and thorough until Nick was twisting under him, breathing his name over and over, his eyes tightly shut and his face blissful. 

Harry aches when he thinks of it, this stupid little throb right at the pit of his stomach. 

But then that’s the point, of this whole - break. This  _heartbreak tour_ , as Alexa called it tonight, four vodka-tonics deep. The point is to get over Nick, to stop messing about in his life. 

_I’ll let you know if i’m back in town_ , he writes vaguely, feeling a little tragic. 

_if???_ Nick writes back right away. _Don’t be silly, you’re not ACTUALLY american. The crew says hello. Well, Finchy says PUT YOUR PHONE AWAY but he means hello . Ha x_

Harry laughs, choked, and types -  _When i’m back. Say hi back. Going to bed. Love x_

It feels stupidly revealing, but he knows Nick won’t see it the way Harry means it, so it’s alright. Everything will be alright, if Harry just keeps it to himself, doesn’t fuck up Nick’s life more than he already has. 

He doesn’t get everything he wants, but no one does. He’s been lucky enough already. 

Still, he scrolls back through his texts, back through months and months of infrequent contact, until he finds this one, from a week before tour. Nick was at work, Harry sleeping in Nick’s bed, and he’d texted -  _bring home breakfast yea?_

Nick had written back - so bloody long ago now - _N_ _eedy, needy popstar. Bacon & egg sound good? Don’t you dare put on clothes x_

And Harry- stupid, stupid Harry- texted him -  _i’ll be here, no clothes whatsoever xx i miss you_

God, how fucking embarrassing. Harry remembers feeling it so  _much_ , right then. Sitting naked in Nick’s bed, the smell of Nick’s cologne lingering in the air from where he’d hastily spritzed it on before work. There was a cooling mug of tea on the nightstand, right next to a bottle of lube, and Puppy was curled up on the duvet, snuffling through her nose. Harry had felt tired and happy and well-fucked, and he’d just- he’d missed Nick. 

He misses Nick so much. 

He thought Nick felt it too, then. Maybe he did. But then Harry left. Tour or not, Harry left, and now he’s reaping what he’s sown. 


End file.
